Movie Review – Shallow Hal
Principal Cast : Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jason Alexander, Tony Robbins, Rene Kirby, Joe Viterelli, Jill Christine Fitzgerald, Susan Ward, Zen Gesner, Joshua Shintani, Nan Martin, Brianna Gardner, Brooke Burns, Kyle Gass, Laura Kightlinger.
Synopsis: A shallow man falls in love with a 300-pound woman because of her inner beauty.
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Whatever the exact opposite of an appreciation for something is, I have that for the films of the Farrelly Brothers. Peter and Bobby went on a hot-streak back in the 90’s and 00’s, directing a string of mega-hits starting with the immediately classic Dumb & Dumber (1994), zipper-clutching There’s Something About Mary (1998), omnidirectional sex-pee in Me Myself & Irene (2000), and this little piece of social commentary starring Jack Black (hot to trot coming off High Fidelity) and Gwyneth Paltrow (an Oscar-winning actress for Shakespeare In Love only a handful of years prior). A lot of the Farrelly’s films involve characters pertaining to either physical disability (Stuck on You saw Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear play conjoined twins), mental disorders (such as Me Myself & Irene’s Jim Carrey portraying a character with split personality disorder), or 2001’s Shallow Hal, in which Jack Black, through the sheer willpower of Tony Robbins’ hypnotic personality, sees people for who they truly are, despite outward appearances. While social commentary and withering subtext often forms the basis of their comedic output, I’ve often found things a little bit too hit and miss for my personal tastes.
Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: Hal Larson (Jack Black) is a shallow and superficial man who judges women purely by their physical attractiveness. He and his equally vain best friend, Mauricio Wilson (Jason Alexander), frequently dismiss women who do not meet their unrealistic beauty standards. Hal’s obsession with outer beauty stems from advice given by his father on his deathbed, instructing him to pursue only the most physically attractive women. One day, Hal becomes trapped in an elevator with self-help guru Tony Robbins (playing himself). Seeing Hal’s shallowness, Robbins hypnotises him, causing Hal to perceive people only by their inner beauty rather than their outward appearance. This newfound perspective leads Hal to meet and fall for Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), a kind-hearted and intelligent woman who, in reality, is overweight but whom Hal sees as stunningly beautiful due to her inner warmth and generosity. As Hal and Rosemary’s relationship develops, Mauricio, who is aware of the hypnosis, grows increasingly concerned about his friend’s new outlook. Eventually, he breaks Robbins’ spell, forcing Hal to see people as they truly are. Initially shocked upon seeing Rosemary’s actual appearance, Hal struggles with his previous superficiality and must confront whether he truly loves her for who she is.
Shallow Hal has gained something of a cult classic status in the two decades since it released; the timing of Shallow Hal couldn’t have been worse, landing in cinemas barely two months after the September 11th attacks on New York City and Washington, but retrospectively it seems that this story of “inner beauty” seems to have struck a chord with people of all persuasions. Whether it’s the full-throated Jack Black performance as Hal, skirting the personality traits of warmly charming and misogynistically hideous, or the restrained turn of Gwyneth Paltrow as the object of his affection – often wearing a tremendous fat-suit to show the differing views of Hal’s viewing of her as a person, and the scenario is ripe for gratuitous fat shaming and body dysmorphic emotional blackmail. That the film manages to shove in a bit of this whilst maintaining a genuine sense of warmth and empathy for the atypically structured among us and still works even by today’s enormously politically correct standards, is something of a minor miracle. I truly doubt Shallow Hal would be made the same way today; some of the humour is too overly broad, some of it lands with a thud, and there’s a legitimate argument that about twenty minutes or so could have been shaved off this thing to make it tighter, but a retrospective viewing of the film has made me appreciate just how sweet and sappy the Farrelly’s made this, despite its potentially repugnant undercurrent of shame.
Written by the Farrelly’s together with Sean Moynihan, Shallow Hal extracts the humour and pathos in equal measure of an overweight Rosemary romancing Hal as the film progresses, with Hal incredulous as to how he sees the character’s inner beauty extremely attractive. What the film tries to do is lean way over the mark in treating the subject matter too seriously – this is a comedy, after all – and at times it’s a touch too silly, too unbelievable to expect people to behave like this in the real life, even life as extremely romanticised as Shallow Hal might enthuse. The script jacks up the dichotomy between the fantasy of “unattractive” people suddenly being supermodel-hot and the reality of those not blessed with Calvin Klein figures to such a heightened degree, turning Hal and Jason Alexander’s truly awful Mauricio into quite unlikeable characters, something the film does a lot of work to turn around as they both grow through their respective arcs. Alexander is in top form playing this kind of conceited, obnoxious, give-no-fucks dickhead, and Mauricio is definitely a guy most women would lay some smackdown onto if they met him in the street. Jack Black, meanwhile, is bug-eyed and bouncy-boop playing Hal, alternating between clownish larrakin and warm-hearted good guy, so much so it almost overcomes his constant stream-of-conscious putdowns to the women around him. These two guys are so superficial, so obnoxiously misogynistic, the film nearly shits its pants with effort of making us want to find out where their story takes us.
I would argue that it’s Paltrow as the obese/skinny Rosemary who performs the film’s greatest feat of narrative sympathy. When Hal sees her in his “iner beauty” phase Paltrow is luminously attractive, although acts the coquettish introvert in a manner that’s quite becoming as the film goes along. This performance makes sense when we realise that Rosemary is actually incredibly overweight, bullied and teased by her family and friends and obviously emotionally insecure (rightly so), and it’s when we see the actress don the spectacularly well done prosthetic fat-suit that gasps will arise, because the effect is so well done, so well achieved, it really does make you rethink your thoughts on what constitutes true beauty. Where I had issues was that the Farrelly’s presented this modern fairy-story take with such black and white profundity, leaving no room for shades of grey, I think the overkill of comedic release undercut the seriousness of the subtextual elements.
Shallow Hal has moments of genuinely great pathos – Hal visits a paediatric burns unity at a hospital Rosemary works at and is struck by how people’s looks aren’t something they can be responsible for, and has that lightbulb moment of clarity that sells the movie – and as is typical with the Farrelly’s they pepper all manner of disabled, disfigured, socially non-attractive folks into the mix, including real-life spina bifida sufferer Rene Kirby, as Hal’s four-limbs walkin’ best friend, and these reflective elements of humour make the spicy overarching narrative of the film work so much smoother. It’s pitch-perfect jabs at cultural, social and genetic expectations while still remaining funny, if uneven, in a film that runs slightly too long and overcooks the meal. Younger fans of Jack Black might have skipped over this one, and to be honest the sour taste of modern Gwyneth Paltrow might make me otherwise turn away, but she’s as palatable as she’s ever been in this one. Shallow Hal is a 00’s era comedy classic for a reason, and it’s definitely worth checking out again.
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